Elton John seems like a happy man. Honestly.

Public outbursts about the paparazzi and Madonna aside (more on that later), the 57-year-old British pop veteran has his 43rd album, Peachtree Road, coming out Tuesday.

"I'll be up for a pension soon," John jokes of the staggering number of records he has made.

And he's enjoying his Las Vegas residency of The Red Piano show at Caesars Palace so much that he wants to extend it beyond his current three-year contract.

"The shows gets wilder and wilder every night," John told the Sun last month during an exclusive Canadian print interview in his swanky Caesars penthouse suite.

"It's like an hour-and-a-half roller-coaster ride. It kind of nods to my past a little bit, with the costumes and the craziness of it, but in the way that I am now. I mean, there's no giant chicken outfits. (But) I can be a little bit more flamboyant than I normally would be if I played in Toronto or Montreal or New York. This show enables me to just be a little bit more naughty."

John clearly has the naughty thing down.

He has been in the headlines recently for calling the Taiwanese paparazzi "rude, vile pigs," and accusing The Material Girl of lip-synching during her live show.

The Canadian media, including the Sun, were advised not to bring up the incidents with John as he had walked out of interviews the previous week when they had been mentioned.

Now the current issue of Entertainment Weekly has a cover story on John this week, proclaiming "I'm Not Cranky!" and features the musician talking at length about both. (He claims to have been ambushed by photographers in the early morning hours in Taiwan and slagged Madge at the Q Awards in London after a drunken lunch and would like to apologize to her.)

Still, the fact that Peachtree Road even exits, frankly, is a bit of a surprise. John previously said his well-received 2001 record, Songs From The West Coast, would be his swansong. And he made the declaration on stage during one of his concerts, no less.

Now John, who vowed in EW that he won't mellow with age, says he was just mad at his U.S. record company.

"I was having a bad time with the record company and I seem to say these things on stage," John says. "You know, things have changed so much. In the '70s, I used to go out with the record company people, we used to be friends, we used to talk music. I don't have a relationship with my record company anymore. I don't talk to them. They don't talk to me. And I'm just full of enthusiasm for music. I want to tell them what's good, what's bad, can I help? I get nothing back. They didn't really do a very good job in America on the last album. And I was so pissed off one night I said, 'You know what? I'm not going to make any more bloody records. I'm just over it.' It was just frustration."

Once again Peachtree Road -- a collection of southern country-and-gospel-soaked mid-tempo ballads (with the exception of one uptempo track, They Called Her The Cat, about a sex-change recipient) -- sees John working with his longtime collaborator Bernie Taupin.

After close to 40 years together, they are the longest-serving songwriting twosome -- Taupin provides the words to Elton's music -- and their process remains unchanged.

"It's still non-collaborative in the sense that we don't write in the same room and that's helped sort of keep the joy flowing," John says. "Because he gives me the lyric and I look at it and decide what I'm going to do with it. And if something comes out well, then I write the song and I memorize it until I've got it in my head. And then I bring him in and see his reaction. And that's just a great joy for me because he usually says he likes it and sometimes he goes nuts because he loves it. And he's never, ever said, 'I don't really like that.' But it's part of the magic of the relationship. I like being part of that team. And 38 years is a long time to write together. And nobody else has done that. I think it's the longest. And it's the strongest position it's ever been now because we've just written a musical together (for the first time) called The Vampire Lestat. So, no, the mystery is still there. God knows how it works. I don't really think about it. I don't really try and analyze it. But I just try and keep it the same. I still get the same kick playing him something that I've written for this album as I did when I played him Your Song. That's pretty special and I don't want to lose that."

Peachtree Road is named after the Atlanta street location of the studio where John -- who owns one of his five houses about 15 minutes away -- recorded the songs and produced himself for the first time.

Even though he has had a home in the southern state since 1991 (his other residences are in Windsor, London, Nice and Venice) he has never written or recorded anything there for one of his own albums.

He has, however, been very prolific with his theatrical and film musicals: Billy Elliott (opening in May), The Vampire Lestat (opening in November), Aida and The Road To Eldorado.

"One thing about Atlanta, you don't get hassled and disturbed," he says. "There's no temptations, like L.A. or New York, leading to 'Let's go out to dinner,' 'cause you're working until you've got the day's work done. You go home, you're back the next day."

John even goes further and says he enjoys an almost anonymous existence.

"All my friends there have nothing to do with music. I can go out to dinner there. I drive my own car there. I don't drive in London because there's too much traffic. I'm on the phone all the time or listening to music. I have the most normal life that I could possibly have there. I go to Tower Records every Tuesday morning, after I play tennis, 'cause that's release day. So I have a routine there and it doesn't entail anything to do with my career.

"A normal life," he says with a smile, before adding, "in inverted commas."

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT THE WAY WE LOOK TO HIM

Give Elton John a Canadian passport!